Last night I didn’t have a snack in front of the TV before bed.

This would not be noteworthy in any way except that this is the first night in about a month that this has happened.  We’ve been snacking.  Popcorn.  Ice cream.  Chocolate.  This has been an adult time ritual that has made the day feel more manageable.  You made it through another day in quarantine.  Here, treat yo self.  I haven’t even been hungry some of the time, but that isn’t even the point.  It’s like an adult pacifier.  I do this, and I feel soothed.

And I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that.  Not in the slightest.  As a wise friend said, we need ALL of our coping mechanisms right now.

I just thought it was interesting that I was able to pull away from it.  Even a tiny bit.

We’ve also ventured into new TV.

Again, whoop di doo, but this is the first time in weeks.  We’ve been doing a ton of rewatching.  And rereading too, for that matter.  I’m not entirely sure why.  Maybe it seemed like more information would be too much.  Maybe we weren’t sure we could count on new shows to be the calming break we needed.  It seems crazy to say that we didn’t have the mental bandwidth to invest in new programming, but that’s exactly where we were.

We’re still doing some rewatching.  But some new shows and movies are starting to slip in.  Nothing too crazy.  I don’t know that we’ll ever get around to watching Mad Men.  But we did watch Ladybird and Logan Lucky.  We saw the first episode of Sex Education and will go back for more.  We’re starting to put ourselves out there again.  Mentally speaking.  Definitely not in a physical way.

These are pretty tiny examples.  Maybe they mean nothing.  Maybe I’m grasping at any sort of pattern or normalcy or anything to make sense of all this.  But I do think that they show signs of acceptance.  Of making a tiny bit of mental peace with the situation.  We still have plenty of anxiety and rage and sadness.  Just existing, however, isn’t fully taking up all of our mental space.  At least all the time.

I don’t think this is a linear process.  I may feel despair this afternoon.  I may be snacking tonight and every night this week.  That’s OK.  I just found it interesting that maybe there is a tiny mental shift.  Maybe.